A friend emailed a couple of questions yesterday: “What are the drawbacks to Post-Modernism? What are weaknesses within the ‘post-modern’ church?” Here are my efforts at a response…
There are likely as many drawbacks to the pomo as there are to the modern. However, one of the great challenges for churches hasn’t changed; it’s the issue of being “in the world and not of the world.” The context we live in is increasingly pomo, so for churches to fight for modernity or to pretend that the pomo doesn’t exist is a failure to incarnate in our given time/space/relationships; the flipside is also a challenge. To be so in the world that we loose sight of the reality that we belong to God.
Modernity was primarily about answers, reason, objective reality and conquering. For one to be right a person had to prove everyone else to be wrong. Our pomo world leaves more and more room for multiple answers, sees reason as a social construct, opts for subjectivity over objectivity, and seeks both/and options.
We have a challenge. For we are postmodern, at least in that we live at a time when postmodernity appears to be transformation Western cultural assumption, as such any missional Christ-community in the Western world must increasingly see itself as pomo, while at the same time churches are more than mere human social constructs, we are not just a product of culture. We are Christ-communities which the Spirit promises to be with, in, under and through, and though churches are social constructs, God, Godself is the center, and participating “shaper” of these constructs.
The institutions of the modern (solid) church feel the “threat of postmodernity” more than groups like quest, in part, because they have much more to loose; i.e. authority, finances, respect, voice, identity, etc.
We can always look at culture and say “Bad, bad culture” (note the starting point of your questions). The more redemptive approach is to ask what might God be inviting his people and the world to, through postmodernity. For example I believe that God maybe stripping away our confidence in objective reason to create an opening for his people to incarnate a dependence on Christ that resonates with, while moving beyond the mind.
What are our certainties? And why do we hold to them? How might we open to the Divine?
Peace, dwight
